A Silent Roar
by Pentacade
Summary: When life signatures emerge from a supposedly derelict spacecraft, the Paladins of Voltron descend into the blackness, hoping to discover further resistance against the Galra Empire. Yet, skittering silently in the darkness, something far more horrific lurks...
1. Chapter 1

"Holy **crap** , check out the size of that thing!" exclaimed Hunk, pointing to a gargantuan, dark object just in vision of the omnispex.  
The rest of the crew were awestruck. Only Pidge and Shiro seemed to be stuck in thought, Lance blindly speaking first like usual.  
"What in the world…"  
"I think it's some kind of… ship." Pidge straightened her heavy-set glasses closer to her face.  
The ship was titanic, like nothing they'd ever seen before. It was a dead hulk of curved, battered space junk, glimmering amidst the black.  
There was no movement, the blob of strange, alien metal freely drifting through the emptiness of a thousand stars.  
"Whatever it is, it's sure not Galra."  
Coran piped up suddenly, his voice quivering slightly. "There's a uh… a distress signal? I think? There's certainly a lot of beeping."  
Shiro's eyes gleamed as he spoke, "Then we have to check it out. If they're survivors from a Galra attack, we _have_ to help them."  
Hunk shook his head.  
"Looks kinda… _spooky_ , you know… Maybe we could just… _give it a_ _ **pass**_ _?_ "  
"Not an option. If there's people to save, we have to go."  
"Yeah, you scaredy-cat. Let's pack our torches and get down to business!" Lance's cocky smile lit up as he spoke.  
Pidge and Keith said nothing. They passed a glance at eachother, silent distress worn on their faces.  
 _Not like we have a choice._

The lions circled the strange, shifting surface of the derelict ship. It seemed to move and shudder to the touch of their engines, bio-mechanical wiring shaking uncomfortably. The tortured frame of the ship didn't seem to have any visible entrances, and was scarred all over from what looked like centuries of wear.  
It was shaped like a blocky half-moon, rounded at the edges with strange, ribbed symbols that looked out of place, even for something so alien.

The torches of the Lions of Voltron barely lit up the black, feeding the dead void of colour across its titanic hull.  
Pidge was the first to speak. "We… _really_ shouldn't be here. This doesn't look like anything we've seen in this galaxy."  
Lance followed "Well, maybe we're the first to see it! There could be like, ancient treasure or something!"  
Hunk's voice quivered out "I think… I think Pidge is right. Let's just go home… please?"  
The Black Lion's massive energy blade fanned out of its silver-tongued lips, cutting sudden, heavy-handed slashes into the wreckage of the hull. Shiro lead from the front.  
"Come on everyone, let's get inside.  
We might not know what's out there, but if there's even a chance there are people here, we have to take it."

The walls crawled with life.  
From the moment they'd left the warm cockpits of their towering Guardian Lions, it was clear.  
Every part of the winding, ribbed corridors seemed like the insides of some colossal, long-dead beast.  
They waded through its arteries, stalked carefully through their veins.  
The monsters' heart bled, as glowing slime oozed from the walls they stood in.

The air was warm, yet breathable. It stuck to the lungs with every inhale and exhale.  
The vibrant uniforms of the Voltron force shone in the darkness, exemplary stand-outs in fields of infinite grey.

Each winding corridor they stepped through seemed like it was made for something much larger.  
Hunk tilted his head upwards, staring at the strange protrusions from the ceiling.  
" _Ooooooooh_ _ **MAN**_ _._ You could stack like, three Shiros at least in this thing!"  
Pidge's confusion was palpable. "I don't think Shiros are a good unit of measurement."  
Their torches cut beams through the dark, grey goop forming webbing around cylindrical chambers.

"Life signs are up ahead." Shiro pointed a few mechanical fingers toward another shaft, blocked behind mountains of the same formless, grey masses.  
Keith pulled his energy sword, whirring into angry, glistening blue life. "Let's get to work."

Cutting through the disgusting, organic fabric was brutally time-consuming. It seemed to thicken the deeper they got, between slashes and short, controlled bursts of gunfire. Even Pidge did all she could, firing her glowing green grapple into the shapeless mud and pulling until great chunks ripped free.

They pulled away more and more, until Hunk started screaming.  
They'd ripped a body away.  
It was Galra, clearly shaped into the strange webbing. It was long-dead, a hole blasted straight through the front of their chest. Something covered their face.  
"I uh… Guys… I need an adult here…"  
Pidge and Lance recoiled, Keith taking a knee as Shiro scanned the body.  
"That doesn't look like a mask you guys've seen, does it?"  
"It looks kinda like a… a hand?"  
It was bone-white, covering everything but the bald head of what appeared to be a Galra officer. Its long fingers wrapped around its head in a long-forgotten death-grip, the smell of decay fresh on the air.

Keith looked upwards, into the room they'd unearthed. It was an entire Galra patrol.  
"Pidge, I hate asking this but… could you check the body? Shiro and I'll go on ahead, see if there's anything still alive down here."  
Hunk's knees clanked together as he stood, shaking. "Uh, what about me and Lance?"  
"Uh… Wanna come with, or stay put?"  
"I'll stay here and… and… _guard Pidge._ Yeah. _I'll keep watch._ "  
Lance sprinted ahead, just slightly further forward than Keith. He walked into the next room in full first.  
"Have fun on 'guard duty' buddy, I'm getting right into the acti—"

The room was even more heavily covered in goo than the outsides, strange green liquid oozing like infested pores. Strange, oblong orbs sat in the centre of the chamber, covered in the same gloom that had beset the entire ship. They had large, x-shaped slits in the top, and the bodies of the Galra littered the floor.

There was no blood, no tell-tale viscera from a struggle.  
Their eyes dipped and darted across the room. Soft squelches could be heard in the distance, low and menacing. Some of the strange devices in the centre had opened and toppled, their tops burst and open.  
 _Could they be… eggs?  
_

Pidge's voice lit up the intercom suddenly, her tone thick with worry.  
"Uh, _guys…_ They weren't shot. Ribcage burst from the inside."  
The thought of horror spread across the team.  
"Something came _out_ of them?"  
"I don't know for sure. But I don't think we should be here any longer than we have to be. You got any life out there Shiro?"  
"Nothing. It says the room's full of life signatures but… I'm only counting us here.  
Dead Galra patrol up ahead, but that's it."  
Keith started up again. "What's the point even going here for nothing?"  
Lance slapped his back lightly, "Yeah, well, I'd rather get off with just mental scarring instead of physical, alright?"

A shrill shriek erupted from the corridor ahead, echoing over and over through the titanic walls of the ship. It bounced off every wall for what felt like a thousand times, monstrous howls roiling from the dark.  
"I think I found out what the life is here, guys…"  
As one, the waist-high cylinders in the centre of the room began shuddering, animating into horrific life.  
They split open with the horrific squelch of goo streaming apart, orifices loudly opening.  
Skittering could be heard from within. Something had awakened here.  
The shrieks in the distance came closer, closer. Always closer and closer, until it was as if their warm breath echoed through the room, just out of sight.  
Their torches couldn't cut through the blackness in front of them, hearing wet skittering throughout the massive chamber. They must have been on the walls, or in them.

Pidge ran in first, weapon gleaming in a soft emerald light. Hunk followed cautiously, shouldering the massive cannon that materialised before him. Lance and Keith stood shoulder to shoulder, Shiro's Galra-tech arm pulsing purple with hidden power.  
"I think it's time to go."  
"Pidge, you first. Hunk behind. We'll cover you as best we can."  
The chamber in the centre suddenly burst with movement, the eggs in the centre detonating with a loud squelch. The hand-shaped creatures lept from the husks of the eggs with a speed unseen among anything they'd faced before.  
" _Paladins,_ _ **get down!**_ "

Lance and Keith just barely escaped the small creatures, spattering them against the wall in a wave of smoking, green viscera. Shiro grabbed it in his mechanical arm with a roar, hurtling the inhuman beast back to the darkness from where it came.

Pidge and Hunk were already in motion. They barely had time to react, let alone counter. Their thin, spindly hands had wrapped around their heads in seconds, long, spine-like tails wrapping around their necks and constricting hard. They dropped to the cold, hard floor in moments, their helmets shattering as the strange beings grappled at their faces.  
"Pidge! Hunk! Oh god, we've gotta get outta here."  
Shiro took command as best he could, barking orders to Lance and Keith as they grabbed the wounded Hunk and Pidge. The creatures had a death-grip on their faces, nothing coming off no matter how hard they pulled.

They sprinted to their lions, the hurried screams of a thousand alien voices behind their bootheels.


	2. Chapter 2

By the time they stood within the walls of the Castle of Lions, the tension had already hit a fever pitch. No matter how hard they tried, the monsters that clutched to Pidge and Hunk's faces couldn't be pulled off. Shiro grabbed it with his metallic arm, shimmering under the sterilised light of the medical room, and yet the creature simply wove its long tail tighter around Hunk's neck.  
There wasn't any time to breathe. There hadn't been a single moment, any one second to think rationally. There was only Pidge and Hunk, near-death on an operating table.

Keith's eyes welled and ebbed, the glistening whites of all of Voltron's Paladins shaking as they looked on, powerless.

"We have to try cutting it."  
Lance's eyes widened further, pupils shaking in their sockets.  
"What are you, insane? We can't just cut straight through and hope for the best. I mean, there's a person under there! There's Hunk, th-there's Pidge there!"  
" _We_ _ **can't**_ _leave them like this._ "  
"That's… I…"  
Shiro placed a heavy arm on Lance's shoulder.  
"I think it's a risk too, but… Keith is right. I'm sorry, Lance, but that thing around their necks… They'll die of we don't help them here."  
Shiro's deep brown eyes stared to the floor, darting upwards to Keith activating his Bayard. A white-and-red sword materialised before a blue light, pulsing into life before them.  
"Start at the… fingers."  
Allura and Coran burst through the slide-opening doors suddenly, horror writ cleanly on their faces.  
Allura spoke first, for once.  
"This is ridiculous! You're in a medical bay, about to work on two of your closest friends, and you use a _sword?_ "  
She extended her hand outwards, a wide array of holographic displays lighting the room even brighter.  
Elegant, bone-white shapes descended from the ceiling of the room, a tiny, cylindrical laser in the centre. With a few sharp, purposeful movements, Allura's gestures seemingly willed the machinery downwards, perfectly positioned around Hunk's head.

It started slicing at the first joint, just inches away from Hunk's head. The soft drone of the red, surgical beam echoed around the chamber, searing away the creature's fingertip.

The tip dropped to the floor with a violent hiss. The laser had just barely missed Hunk's skin, lightly singeing his hair.

"That's one…"  
Allura looked up past the myriad of holographic displays before her. Coran's orange-tinted moustache seemed to tingle.  
"Anybody else smell, _uh_ … **burning?** "  
Coran took a deep, exaggerated whiff of the air, before looking down.

Where the fingertip of the face-grasping creature once sat, a small hole had slowly been eaten through the ship. The glistening, clean architecture of the ship gave way to a sickly green goop, melting away everything down to the next floor. The hole was small, barely enough to place a finger through, but the acid melted clean through.

Shiro motioned an X with his hands, looking upwards to the creatures still wrapped around their neck.  
"We can't cut them off."  
Keith's eye twitched violently, "So what _can_ we do, Shiro? Just let them die here?"  
"All we can do is just… think and...—"  
"And _what?_ "  
The creatures shuddered lightly, a last quiet dance, before falling limp to the floor.  
"…Wait."

Within a few minutes, the two remaining Paladins were gasping for air, lungs straining for raspy breath.  
Between coughs, Hunk could barely manage words. _Not for lack of trying._  
"Oh… Oh _man, oh_ _ **god**_ _!"  
_ Lance's smile lit up the medbay, sparkling glitter in his eyes.  
"Hunk! You're okay! Oh man, I'd hug you if you weren't all… icky and… buggy."  
"Yeah… Thanks. Put it… on tab for me later?" Hunk spluttered out another string of coughs.  
Pidge was sucking in air as fast as she could, panting. As her breathing slowed to normal gradually, she straightened her now-cracked glasses, a diagonal line of white sliding through the centre of her lenses.  
She looked downward, to her shaking hands, then further past it, the dead, bone-white hand curled into a rough ball of protruding fingers and prehensile tails.

There was a long silence. The scent of pyrrhic victory filled the warm air.  
Hunk and Pidge seemed fine, now. But it wasn't from any action of the Paladins.  
They simply _stopped._ No explanation, no clear reasoning. Dropped off like flies. 

Hunk's body lurched downward as he sat up.  
"I'm not… feeling too hot."  
"Don't worry man, it'll be fine! C'mon, I'll take you back to your place. You wanna rest, right?"  
"I uh… yeah. That… That'd be great, Lance. Thanks."  
Hunk placed a heavy arm over Lance's shoulder, sharing the weight of standing between them. They gradually limped to the door, Lance straining slightly.  
"You're not the lightest, are ya?"  
Hunk's chuckles echoed heartily into the next room.

Pidge looked up at Allura, amber eyes glistening wide through thick-rimmed, broken glasses.  
Her short auburn hair was in shambles, stray hairs propping up in every direction.  
"Do you… think we're going to be alright?"  
Allura embraced Pidge lovingly, holding her shaking head lightly against her warm body.  
"You're going to be fine, Pidge.  
We're gonna do a few checks on you to make sure you're alright, and then you'll be tip-top."  
"But… What about Hunk?"  
Shiro planted his mechanical hand on Pidge's shoulder.  
" _Whatever_ it was, Pidge, you've both had to deal with it. We're just checking on you to make sure that nothing's wrong, and by making sure you're alright, we'll know of Hunk's fine, too."  
Keith scratched his head as he started up. "Not that he'd let us check on him, anyway. Guy loves his beauty sleep."

The night was dark as pitch, an imagined chill wind sweeping through every deck of the massive Castle of Lions. The entire ship thrummed with the cold silence of the void. They were so close to death aboard that ship. Every Paladin thought it.  
 _It could have been me.  
We should have been safer.  
If I went, we'd lose Voltron.  
How could we put their lives in danger?  
Is Pidge okay?  
Is Hunk?  
What were those creatures?  
_  
The void was silence, sleepless in the cold.  
The vastness of space thrummed with the quiet of survival.  
But still, it gave its answer.  
The mice were missing.


	3. Chapter 3

Night on the Castle of Lions was an abyss. Dimmed, artificial light littered the floor and ceiling, the centre of each hallway a streak of blackness. The twilight was pure silence, not even the low hum of the Altean engines reaching the ears of those dwelling in cabins.

Allura had finally decided to turn in for the night, her eyelids weighing heavily on her drowsy mind.  
She'd already checked Pidge a few hours ago. Nothing.  
She'd scanned for any form of known infection, organ failure, even minor inconveniences on the body, and everything was perfectly fine.  
Pidge even had the soft sparkle in her eye back.  
But the dead quiet of the ship gave no time to reminisce.

Hunk's tell-tale snoring was nowhere to be seen.  
It used to echo through every wall of the Castle of Lions, but there was just the stillness.  
The gentle scurrying of the mice, too, had gone silent.  
The holo-meters of the bridge hummed no longer.  
There was nothing but the silence.

The squeaks of the mice were long gone.  
There was only the silence.  
The engines were dead.  
There was only the silence.  
Hunk's breathing had stopped.  
There was only the silence.  
Nothingness.  
 _The abyss._

Lance stumbled into Hunk's room, his tan face slick with hidden tears.  
 _There'd been no signs of anything alive for ten minutes now._  
The future-tech lights were shattered, pulsing light a broken mess on the floor.  
Every gradual pulse seemed to reveal more and more fragments.  
Hunk's large, messy bedsheets, painted a shade of deep, sudden red.  
His colourless face, staring blankly into the abyss.  
The gaping hole punched through his chest, viscera painting the barely-lit walls.  
And above all else, the break in the wall where whatever had burst out fled through.

Lance screamed out, his shaking hands resting against Hunk's cold cheeks, his lifeless head shaking with him. There could be no words.  
Lance held his friend closer, slender arms gripping Hunk's heavy-built shoulders as tightly as he possibly could.

Allura simply stood there in shock. One single word jolted through her mind, a bolt of abject horror.  
 _Pidge._

Lance wouldn't move. He couldn't budge an inch. He lied there, amidst the dead glitter of a thousand broken lights, arms clutching a remnant of life. 

_**Pidge.  
**_ _We need to help her.  
We can't let this happen again. _

Allura rushed down the hallway in a fit of panic.  
Whatever strange creature now lurked in the depths could be anywhere on the ship.  
Every loud clack of a footstep could be the last.  
It could draw the creature at any moment, yet…  
Still they ran.

They couldn't lose another Paladin. Not now.  
After fighting titans. Living planets. Worlds of infinite light.  
After fighting the leader of a galaxy-spanning empire.  
They couldn't lose to a parasite.

Yet still, they ran.

Distress was worn on their faces, a mask of terror that spread like wildflame. There'd barely even been time to process what had happened to Hunk, let alone understand how to counter it.  
Pidge was already out cold, a sedative taken as a last-minute precaution.  
Shiro knew what had happened. He could see the way death imprinted itself on their faces.  
He'd seen it before, in the Galra prisons.

"We need to find a way to stop it."  
"To stop _what?_ "  
Pieces of equipment were hurled around the room.  
Allura and Coran frantically scrambled for something, medical tools scattered across the bay constantly.  
The sterilised smell of the medbay gave way to sudden panic. Cluttered bangs sounded over and over.  
Shiro and Keith joined in, drawers shoved open.  
"Uhh… What in the hell are we looking for?"  
Allura was hyperventilating as she looked through.  
It was aimless, pointless.  
"I… don't know. We need… something, a laser scalpel, or… or… I _don't know._ "  
"What in the _hell_ is happening, Allura?"  
She looked up at Keith, her glassy eyes hiding tears.  
"Keith… Hunk is… he's dead."  
Keith's calm visage gave way to shock, to horror, to fear.  
 _ **Hunk.**_ _  
Pidge was next._  
 _They had to do something.  
_

The surgical equipment came down from above in a sterilised blur of whirring engines.  
Lasers aimed down, eagerly awaiting Allura's motions.  
 _She's still under.  
It could work. _

_It has to._

And as they scrambled for something that might work, Pidge's voice, quiet and groggy, started.  
" _G… Guys… What's happening?"_  
She wiped at her left eye through her broken glasses, shuffling forward in place.  
 _"Is… Is everything alright?"  
_ Shiro looked back.  
"You're gonna be just fine. We've just got something to check through, alright?"  
Allura looked to Coran. His gentle face was marred with fear.  
"We're gonna have to cut it out. _There's no other way, is there?_ "  
 _There has to be something.  
There has to be something.  
There has to be._

" _Ngh…_  
 _I don't… feel…"_  
It was subtle at first, a gentle wince, a quiet cracking.  
Pidge clutched at her front, one hand over the other. Her breathing was short, raspy.  
 _"He-help… me…"  
_ There was the sound of a crack, a heavy break. It crunched like tearing metal. _  
_Pidge doubled over, her whole body shaking. She could barely move.  
Screams of splintered bone erupted from her chest.  
Pidge was forced back, writhing in pure agony as cartilage crunched from the inside.  
Each Paladin recoiled in shock. 

"Oh god… Somebody, hold her down or… _**something**_ , I don't know… We need to cut it out…  
We need to…"  
There was another crunch, louder still.  
Another. Louder, louder.  
One last push.  
 _Life._

Pidge's screams stopped.  
Her wide eyes looked forward into the blank void.  
And in a shower of viscera and shards of bone, new life was born. 


End file.
